Does Colocation Make Sense for your Business?

Does Colocation Make Sense for your Business?

Does Colocation Make Sense for your Business?

In case you are looking for good hosting solutions for your business, you would have come across the term Colocation. Just like dedicated servers and cloud hosting, Colocation is also a hosting option for you. In fact, it might be the best choice for you.

What exactly is Colocation?

In short, a Colocation provider allows you to place your own servers and other hardware in their data center. You pay for the space you occupy as well as the facilities provided by the data center, such as stable power supply, network connectivity, etc.

The most important advantage of Colocation is that it allows you to have your own servers in a stable and safe environment. You wouldn’t have to worry about taking risks or increasing infrastructure while scaling your servers.

So, does Colocation make sense for your business?

It would, if:

You have multiple office locations : Managing employees in different locations can be a hassle. When it comes to providing steady, reliable network for your multiple office locations, (either same city or different cities) Colocation would be the best option. It would be able to move data through the most geographically able data networks.

You have own hardware : If you currently own a server set-up that is capable, opting for Colocation can help you save some valuable money. You wouldn’t have to set-up power, cooling requirements, etc in-house. Rather, a Colocation data center would provide all those for a far lesser amount.

An In-house data center is too costly for your business: Google’s search engine returns around 11.5 million results for “data center total cost of ownership” according to a report. It shows that a huge number of companies are considering this aspect. The operating costs for servers would be too high if you have a small sized business.

In such cases, Colocation is the perfect solution. As you are sharing the support infrastructure with numerous other companies, your ownership cost goes down drastically.

Recovery Options : An in-house data center will have its limits when it comes to recovery options. Professional Colocation data centers, on the other hand are large facilities with different redundancy levels and all possible precautions. They make sure that your servers have minimal working issues, and remain available throughout.

Scalability : If your business is growing at a fast pace, the existing in-house data center might become insufficient. To build a data center is by no means a low-cost task. If it exceeds your budget, your best option is Colocation – an affordable and stable hosing solution.

Company Resources : You might not have security personnel who might be around 24/7 to ensure protection of your servers. As servers are online 24/7, the chance of hacking is high. If such resources are too expensive, Colocation is an affordable alternative.

Similarly, you can choose Colocation also to free up existing human resources who are spending time with server and equipment upkeep. They would be able to concentrate on more important business tasks.

High Requirement Applications : Leasing servers would not be an economical option in the long run if your applications require high performance that consumes a lot of resources. In such cases, making a one-time payment to buy your own servers and opting for Colocation is a less costly option.